Nowadays, global transport facilities are increasingly developed, and along with the rapid development of economy, populations float frequently between different places, but there is yet no effective means for statistics about the floating information of the populations floating between different places. At present, information about people entering and leaving an administrative region can be roughly obtained mainly by methods as follows:
1. Information about the people entering and leaving the administrative region from an airport, a railway station, a coach station and a port can be obtained by querying information about passengers of a flight, a train, a coach and a ship; and
2. Information about native populations and migrants can be obtained by population census.
The populations can float between different places by virtue of profit-making tools such as airplanes, trains, coaches and ships as well as non-profit tools such as buses, wagons and motorcycles. For the condition that people take the non-profit tools, information about the people entering and leaving the administrative regions cannot be obtained by a conventional means, so that information obtained by the first method is not so accurate. Although the second method (population census method) is relatively accurate, a population census period is too long (taking a number of years), and the information about the people entering and leaving the administrative regions cannot be dynamically obtained, so that a requirement of daily statistics cannot be met.
Along with the development of mobile communication, almost every adult has a mobile phone. For example, up to April 2012, there have been more than 1 billion of mobile phone users in China, and the popularizing rate of mobile phones among adults has approached 100 percent. Therefore, this becomes the basis for obtaining the information about the people floating between the administrative regions by means of the mobile communication technology.
An International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI), used to identify a mobile user, is stored in a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card, a Home Location Register (HLR) and a Visitor Location Register (VLR) respectively.
The HLR is responsible for managing the mobile user and storing the registration data of an administrated user and the location information of the mobile user, and includes information such as the IMSI of the user, a Mobile Subscriber International Integrated Services Digital Network/Public Switched Telephone Network (ISDN/PSTN) Number (MSISDN) and a Mobile Switching Centre (MSC)/VLR where the user is located.
The VLR stores the information of all mobile stations in the region administrated by the VLR, and includes information such as the IMSI of the user, the MSISDN, a Temporary Mobile Subscriber Identity (TMSI), location areas where the mobile stations are registered, a supplementary service parameter.
A Location Area Code (LAC) covers a geographic region, and the geographic region covered by the LAC can be large or small, and is generally divided according to a paging amount and the administrative region.
In a conventional mobile communication system, the relationship among a prefectural administrative region, the LAC, the MSC, the VLR and the HLR is as follows:
1) the MSC and the VLR are in a one-to-one relationship;
2) one prefectural administrative region includes one or more LAC regions, and there is no LAC crossing two prefectural administrative regions;
3) one prefectural administrative region includes one or more HLRs, and there is no HLR crossing two prefectural administrative regions; and
4) one prefectural administrative region includes one or more MSCs/VLRs, and there is no MSC/VLR crossing two geographic administrative regions.
During the standby stage of the mobile station, if it is detected that the location area of the mobile station is changed, a location update flow is initiated to a network. The mobile station sends a Location Update Request message to the network at first, the Location Update Request message including the final valid TMSI and final valid Location Area Identity (LAI) of the mobile station and a location update type. A reason for location update caused by the change in the location area is “Normal”.
The TMSI is allocated by the VLR.
The LAI is configured for the location update of the mobile user, and includes:
LAI=Mobile Country Code (MCC)+Mobile Network Code (MNC)+LAC. The MCC is configured to identify different countries, for example, the MCC of China is 460. The MNC is configured to identify different operators in a country, for example, the MNC of China Mobile is 00 and the MNC of China Unicom is 01.
The VLR can identify the IMSI according to the TMSI and the LAI. When the mobile station leaves a region administrated by a VLR and enters a region administrated by a new VLR, if the new VLR does not have the TMSI and the LAI, an Identity Request message is sent to the mobile station to request the mobile station to transmit the IMSI. The mobile station carries the IMSI in an Identity Response message, and sends the Identity Response message to the new VLR.
Once the new VLR determines the IMSI of the mobile station, the new VLR notifies the HLR to which the mobile station belongs of that the mobile station has entered the region administrated by the new VLR. The HLR updates the location information of the mobile station as the information of the new VLR, and the HLR notifies, by virtue of a Cancel Location message (including the IMSI of the mobile station), the original VLR where the mobile station was located to delete the information of the mobile station.
Then, the new VLR allocates a new TMSI to the mobile station, and the new TMSI and a new LAI are carried in a Location Update Accept message, which is transmitted to the mobile station.
In response to the received Location Update Accept message containing the new TMSI and the new LAI, the mobile station sends back a TMSI Reallocation Complete message. The location update process finishes.
From the relationship between the geographic administrative region and the VLR, it can be determined that the location update across geographic regions above the prefectural level is definitely trans-VLR normal location update.
For the trans-VLR normal location update, the reason for location update is “Normal”, and user identities carried in the Location Update Request message are the TMSI and the LAI. The VLR transmits the Identity Request message to the mobile station to request the mobile station for the IMSI, and the mobile station transmits the Identity Response message carrying the IMSI to the VLR.
The location update flow is shown as FIG. 1.
The interface D is an interface between the HLR and the VLR, and is responsible for bearing a message between the HLR and the VLR.
The interface A is an interface of a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) system between the MSC and a Base Station Controller (BSC), and is responsible for bearing a message between the MSC and the BSC.
The interface Iu is an interface under the Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) system or the Time Division-Synchronization Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) system. The interface Iu is an interface between the MSC and a Radio Network Controller (RNC), and is responsible for bearing a message between the MSC and the RNC.
The interface Um is an interface between a mobile station of the GSM system and a GSM radio subsystem, and is responsible for bearing a message between the mobile station and the radio subsystem.
The interface Uu is an interface between a mobile station of the WCDMA system or the TD-SCDMA system and a WCDMA radio subsystem or a TD-SCDMA radio subsystem, and is responsible for bearing a message between the mobile station and the radio subsystem.
The locations of the interface D, the interface A, the interface Iu, the interface Um and the interface Uu in a mobile communication network are shown in FIG. 1.
The Cancel Location message on the interface between the HLR and the VLR and the Location Update Request message on the interface between the radio subsystem and a MSC are not transmitted on the same interface, it is thus difficult to directly obtain a time difference between the Cancel Location message and the Location Update Request message.
From FIG. 1, it is known the Location Update Accept message on the interface between the radio subsystem and the MSC is transmitted after the Cancel Location message on the interface between the HLR and the VLR, and thus it can be seen that a time difference between the Location Update Accept message and the Location Update Request message is greater than the time difference between the Cancel Location message and the Location Update Request message.
For Frequency Division Duplex-Long Term Evolution (FDD-LTE) and Time Division Duplex-Long Term Evolution (TDD-LTE) networks, main differences related to this disclosure are as follows:
A network element Home Subscriber Server (HSS) in an LTE network is corresponding to the HLR in a GSM/WCDMA/TD-SCDMA network.
A Tracking Area Code (TAC) in the LTE network is corresponding to the LAC in the GSM/WCDMA/TD-SCDMA network.
Tracking Area Update in the LTE network is corresponding to Location Update in the GSM/WCDMA/TD-SCDMA network.
There is no MSC/VLR of a Circuit Switched (CS) domain in the LTE network. The Mobility Management Entity (MME) in the LTE network is corresponding to the Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) of a Packet Switched (PS) domain in a 2nd-Generation (2G) and 3rd-Generation (3G) networks.
A tracking area update flow of the FDD-LTE network and the TDD-LTE network is shown in FIG. 8.
Based on the above description, it comes to the inventor's attention that it may be possible to obtain the information of users floating between administrative regions using the mobile communication technology, in order to improve the accuracy of the obtained information of the users floating between administrative regions. However, until now there has been no related technical solution for obtaining the information of the users floating between the administrative regions using the mobile communication technology.